Thread by @AkivaMCohen

ok, #LitigationDisasterTourists, a brief thread on the Sixth Circuit's "lol, no" response to Sidney & the Klown's request to stay the District Court's sanctions order.

First thing to note is that the stay request was decided by a 3-judge panel. Unless the 6th does things very weird, that's probably the 3 judges who will be hearing the appeal from the order.

This will become important shortly

As just about every competent attorney who looked at the stay request explained (and yeah, that includes the opposing counsel, but not Sidney & the Klown) waiting until the very last minute to seek "emergency relief" was, well, a big mistake

Generally speaking, appellate courts are not kindly disposed to parties who delay for no good reason and then come running into court with their hair on fire claiming they need immediate relief

Bottom line, there was no reason for this crew of super geniuses to wait until the monetary sanctions were fully decided before asking the District Court to stay the non-monetary sanctions, and there's no explanation for their choice to wait that isn't AT BEST completely idiotic

"inexplicable" isn't a word that comes up in appellate decisions often, particularly not about attorney behavior; judges rarely like to run down a party or their counsel that way.

Sidney and the Klown managed to piss off the panel enough that they had no hesitation at all.

And this first substantive bit explains why: Sidney and the Klown spent their entire stay brief basically slagging the District Court judge, calling her a hack and a megalomaniac. The panel did not like that

And that "this will be important" bit? It's not just that Sidney and the Klown managed to piss off the panel before they've even had a chance to see the merits brief (though it is that, too).

It's not just that this is the same (now pissed off) panel these galactic incompetents need to retroactively bless their insane and unnecessary decision to blow past the word limit, which the panel has no reason to grant (though it's that, too)

It's that the panel went out of its way to praise the District Judge's analysis as "painstaking" and Sidney and the Klown's main merits argument was that the judge didn't really do enough specific analysis to support the sanctions award

And because these complete and utter morons managed to torpedo their own stay motion by waiting until they submitted their full opening brief, they didn't even get the benefit of having that ruling BEFORE committing themselves on appeal

So they can't adjust their argument on appeal to account for what they now know (that the reviewing panel thinks the District Judge was thorough and fair).

Just a total and self-inflicted litigation disaster from disaster artistes working at the absolute peak of that profession

Update:

Note: This doesn't change the substantive issue: the merits panel is now going to be highly unlikely to rule that this panel got it wrong and the district judge actually wasn't painstaking enough. But at least they won't have a panel already pissed before reading their brief